Time for a new Australian bushfire policy?

Saturday morning in Melbourne, Australia. We hunkered down at home, with blinds drawn to keep the extreme weather out, every so often peeking out the window to see where the garden thermometer had got to.

By midday the thermometer showed 40 °C. As it climbed relentlessly to 41, 42, 43, 44, reaching 47 by teatime, excitement quickly shifted to foreboding. Humidity was low too: a mere 4% - making your skin prickle - compared to a more usual 30%. Add fierce, hot winds that whipped at the windows, and you will have an idea of the "perfect storm" conditions that led to what may be the worst bushfires in Australia's history.

At the time of writing, the army has been called in to help fight bushfires still burning out of control, over 700 homes have been destroyed - many in Melbourne's commuter belt - and more than 330,000 hectares burnt.
The official death toll stands at 131; and untold numbers of people are homeless, injured or missing.

Australia has a national fire-preparedness policy, perhaps uniquely, of encouraging people to either "stay and defend or leave early".
But as the tragedy continues to unfurl there will be increasing
pressure to reexamine a policy developed for conditions that existed
half a century ago.

The rationale behind the policy is that if you have a fire plan in
place - that is, you have a water source, a pump that is not dependent
on the power supply, you have ember-proofed your house, and so on - it
is safer to stay and let the front pass over, than to leave at the last
moment. And historically, it is true that most houses lost in bush
fires have burnt because of defendable ember-strikes rather than direct
contact with the fire, and most deaths have been due last-minute
evacuations.

But conditions have changed. Southern Australia's epic 12-year drought,
higher temperatures due to climate change, and less "prescribed"
burning to remove the plant life that acts as fuel, all combine to increase the risk of extreme
fire. This year already, we've had several days in the mid-40s that
have burnt leaves off trees, and squeezed the last drops of moisture
out of already tinder-dry bush. One survivor described the ground underfoot prior
to the fires going through as "like walking on cornflakes".

Under those conditions, a fire plan may simply not be enough, as
Victoria's premier John Brumby told the Fairfax Radio Network today:
"There is no question that there were people there who did everything
right, put in place their fire plan and it wouldn't matter, their house
was just incinerated." Brumby wants the policy rexamined.

People have changed too. Small towns like devastated Marysville - 90 minutes' drive northeast of Melbourne - as well as the
ever-expanding fire-prone city fringes, are as likely to be home to
retirees and "treechangers" (city people who move to the country for a
life change) as they are to families with generations of bushfire
experience.

One of the commonest reasons for people who intend to stay and defend
their properties to change their mind and leave at the last moment is
that with no direct experience of fire they are not prepared
psychologically.

According to Robert Heath,
a psychologist at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, they
don't bank on the overwhelming heat, the lack of contact with the
outside world, the darkness, or the noise: loud and like a huge
blowtorch, apparently. Perhaps it's not surprising then, that many people who lost
their lives are thought to have done so while fleeing in their cars.

For now, one thing is clear. Once the wait for the final death toll is
over, there will be another agonising wait as experts drill though the
statistics to learn whether Australia's bushfire preparedness policy
saved or cost lives this weekend.

I live in a forrest in West Australia. 40deg heat and strong winds happen every summer. Because we are on the fringe of a not very active earthquake zone, planning laws required our house to have expensive anti-quake features built in. There were NO requirements for anti-fire features. The house is in brick with metal framed windows (good) with a timber framed tile roof (disastrous). If a fire comes through and I'm not here it will burn down. Three years after the Canberra fires when 500 homes were lost I asked a Perth roofing contractor to price a guaranteed ember proof roof. "Can't be done, they don't make one." was his answer (he made about 50 phone calls in arriving at this negative response). I wonder if someone will develop one now? Probably not, I guess.
For interest, if I am home I'll lift a few roof tiles, go inside the roof with my fire hose (which is connected to a petrol driven pump fed from a big concrete tank) and thoroughly wet the entire roof interior). I'll retire inside whilst the fire front passes, and emerge to douse spot fires. If, despite all ,the house burns and the outside is still too hot, I'll jump into the water tank.
What I fear will happen in future is that the Nanny state will require the police/fire brigade to (try to)forcibly evacuate me if a fire is coming.

David Heigham
on February 9, 2009 2:46 PM

There is a reasonably priced house now entering mass production that simply cannot burn. It is at http://www.ambientehomes.com/..

Their Ambiente roof slabs would make a guaranteed ember-proof roof if they were sold for that..

Peter Schofield
on February 9, 2009 3:47 PM

Why not dig basements or `air-raid` type shelters ? At least you could stay to protect your property, and even if it did burn, you would be safe. A lot of outback houses used to have tin roofs; were these ok ?

DRR
on February 9, 2009 8:00 PM

I agree with Peter Schofield-after reading and hearing about the Aussie conflagrations I think they should make a new law requiring all homes, mobile homes, apartment flats, comm. properties, schools, in fact every property in a high fire risk area not only in Australia, but here in California, too to have not only underground cyclone cellar-style shelters but have them acessable to the disabled-especially in areas that back up to bush or forest lands.
And if the home or business owner with an older structure can't afford to retrofit his property with an underground shelter, the Government, Habitat for Humanity, or church organizations, etc. can step in and help out. Already should have passed such a law 100 plus years ago-wonder how many lives or even properties might have been saved.

We should be looking to construct dwellings below the earth in australia. Earth and native grasses provide a wonderfull roof insulation for the climate we have, and would allow a fire storm to literaly pass right over.

Take our parliment house as an example of smart design for our harsh (and getting harsher) climate.

And 173 dead from the weekend is the latest figure, its expected to reach around 200 as sadly.

N@
on February 9, 2009 11:23 PM

My parents were in the Strzelecki Ranges in Gippsland. They were some of the lucky ones and the fire went passed them, even with a large pine plantation right next to there property. My father could see the flames, he said it sounded like a loud train rushing towards you.

They were threatened on Saturday night, and my mother went to leave early but all the roads were blocked. She had to turn back. I'm sure many people lost their lives in similar situations.

The weather last weekend in Victoria was unprecedented. The previous highest temperature in Melbourne was 45.6 degrees, and it was set in January, usually the hottest time of the year. Breaking the previous temperature record by 0.8 degrees in February was surprising to many, even my meteorologist and climatologist friends.

@Peter Schofield
Our winter project this year at my parents property is now to build a fire bunker.

Anonymous
on February 9, 2009 11:44 PM

From what I heard, there were people who had an underground bunker with a solid steel lid. The fire heated the metal through, it was white hot. If the fire had of been moving any slower the steel would have melted through. The pace of the fire actually saved them. I was wondering last night what could be used that was actually fire proof. The only thing I could think of was porcelain as that's used to melt things on busens. But it would still shatter. Is there anthing else which could be used?

Richard
on February 10, 2009 12:09 AM

I would have thought that an earth covered roof would have a good chance. Not a thin covering mind you but a metre or so. There should be a couple of entrances reached by passages - ideally with a bend to cut radiant heating from the metal door. A decent stone lintel above each door and a barrier (maybe a boulder) a small distance in front of each door as a shield should help protect the door. Similarly smaller air channels flowing over basins of water to bring in and cool air and a chimney to get the hot air out.
If the fire is overhead how do you avoid the air all being sucked out? Maybe making the ventilation shafts fairly long would mitigate this risk.
The chimney needs to contain a radio and/or TV and mobile aerial to monitor what is going on and in case you get trapped.

Terry
on February 10, 2009 1:22 AM

A sheet of concrete could be used to make a lid that would withstand quite a furnace.

Stone and earth are the best fire proof materials to construct with, but rather expensive, and they require propper support as roofing.

jerry
on February 10, 2009 2:32 AM

Peter Kerr's comment about fire standards is very apt.

There are building codes for cyclone resistance and codes for earthquake resistance. There are also basic fire codes.

It does not seem difficult to develop bush fire resistance building codes - including siting and water resources required. There has been a very long history of such fires so there is no excuse for the lack of codes.

Regarding the various proposals in other comments to fireproof homes, the things that are very deadly are direct thermal radiation from the fire-front - up to megawatts per square meter - and residual fires and embers. The radiation will kill you directly and can cause the curtains and carpets to catch fire by shining through the windows.

For the radiation aspect, exactly the same treatment is needed for energy efficient housing as is needed for fire radiation protection so the investment is not wasted at all. In principal all you need is a very shiny roof - bare galvanized metal - and thick underlying fiberglass insulation with a second shiny layer facing down into the roof cavity. For windows and doors, shutters of similar material work very well.

The residual fires and embers can be countered by not having gutters in the first place, or keeping them very clean. That and keeping trees and bushes a little away from the house.

Matt
on February 10, 2009 3:00 AM

In South Australia at least you're required to have gutters on anything bigger than a garden shed. In Arizona I remember a lack of gutters, and they had a course of gravel on the ground where the run off from the roof goes to prevent erosion. Much more sensible. But then again it is hard to collect the rain without the gutters. All the "gutter guard" type products to keep out the gum leaves are duds.

Terry
on February 10, 2009 5:11 AM

Gutters aren't necisary if your roof is covered in turf. The water soaks through the soil and can be percolated through to drainage sytems under the soil.

Look up rooftop gardens.

There are lots of innovative design solutions, it just requires some will to think outside the norm.

If building codes for fire zones were revised with these new design solutions in mind we could benefit from safer buildings and an improved quality of life.

If they do look at building codes, now is the time to do it, before the rebuilding commences.

Bane
on February 10, 2009 5:37 AM

Rooftop gardens?

What a silly idea in a drout ravaged country, it would turn into a rooftop fuel source!

Greg
on February 10, 2009 8:59 AM

A vertical timber door covered externally in 2mm sheet steel will suffice. An airlock and another timber door to provide an insulation space. Concrete walls and roof with some earth on top.
A friend of mine had built a similar bunker that saved his family's life in Kinglake on Saturday. There is a photo of it in Mondays Herald Sun near the rear of the paper. He built it into the bank beside his concrete water tank which also helped insulate and cool the bunker. The only thing left was the tank and bunker. He did manage to save his neighbours house. His house was almost impossible to defend as it was 2 storey, timber with a full length 2nd level deck. If anyone is thinking of building a bunker his is a good model.

Bane I think you miss the point of the garden on the roof. It grows in soil. The soil doesn't burn and insulates the house. If you had taken a shovel and dug a hole 50cm deep immediately after the fires went through you would have found the soil cool and the earthworms very much alive. The plants may burn but only to the roots.

Its 173 lives lost. Lets not forget the people whom have lost their life not counting those other injuries that have been sustained. My condolences to all of them.

We learn out lesson from them and prevent it from happening again. That is how we respect them. Those policies clearly cost lives and we need to have it review and introduce new policies in those fire zones.

Anyway, how long has it been since we update those policies? The climate have change, the environment have change, have our policies accomodate those changes??

Eugene
on February 10, 2009 11:21 PM

I can't see that officially changing the policy is going to help. It is still the best advice for a few reasons...

1. It's often extremely difficult to anticipate the path of the fire, how can people know for sure that where they're evacuating to will nescessarily be safer than their homes.

2. The speed of the fires meant that in a lot of cases it would have been impossible to give enough warning for people to evacuate safely. A house with a good water supply is certainly a safer place to be when a fire front hits than in car.

3. If you were going to err on the side of caution and evacute everyone from fire prone towns, you'd be evacuating half the towns in the state.

4. Arsonists (who are believed to be responsible for a significant number of the fires) most likely would target areas where they can cause the most death and destruction. If one town has been evacuted, then they would likely target another.

While what happened on Saturday is certainly a tragedy, there is no way for government policy to completely eliminate the risk.

Government policy cannot make it rain, or prevent heatwaves, or stop derranged individuals wanting to kill people by starting forest fires.

Incidentally there isn't any hard evidence that controlled fuel reduciton burns actually help. Over time they may make conditions worse, by drying out the forests. All they can really do is clear the undergrowth, and with the conditions on Saturday, the fires can easliy spread through the forest canopy.

On the other hand "controlled" fuel burns have directly caused quite a number of out-of-control forest fires in the past, and in some cases have caused damage to forests which will take decades to fix.

Asside from clearing all the forests in the southern states there's nothing that can be done to completely prevent bush fires.

Eugene
on February 10, 2009 11:39 PM

Perhaps what should be done...

Provide consultation to home owners to help them develop their fire plans. The decision to stay and fight, or evacuate should not just be personal preference. It should be based on experience and knowledge. It should also depend a great deal on the location of the house.

For example a house completely surrounded by thick forest should be evacuated, because in the event of a severe fire, it would be impossible to defend it.

However if a house is not directly adjacent to forest and the grass has been kept trimmed etc., then the threat would most likely be due only to ember attack. It would be silly to simply leave it to burn when it could be saved.

Perhaps they could also mandate that homes built in high-risk areas must have a safe room of some kind, a retreat of last resort. All it would require is a cellar with sufficient heat proofing and a water supply. If it becomes clear the house itself will be lost, they can retreat to the cellar and wait it out.

david
on February 11, 2009 12:28 AM

It seems to me that living in and around trees and forrests that use flammability as an an evolutionary strategy (gums) really needs to be re-examined.

Green belts of pasture around residential areas and planting of fire retardant street trees would prevent these fires occurring again, though it has often been local policy to plant natives in many councils, and this often means gum trees.

Following this logic, rebuilding in the same areas would not really make sense either.

this page has some more details of what im talking about. http://www.fateucalypts.com.au/fire.htm

Eugene
on February 11, 2009 12:29 AM

> From what I heard, there were people who had an underground bunker with a solid steel lid. The fire heated the metal through, it was white hot. If the fire had of been moving any slower the steel would have melted through. The pace of the fire actually saved them.

I heard that it was glowing, but red, not white. It wouldn't have been anywhere near melting temperature. To glow red, steel needs to get to approximately 400C, certainly very attainable in a bush fire. To melt it would have to get to at least 1400C. You'll notice in the photos that the corrugated iron roofing is still relatively intact on most of the houses, just the wooden trusses have burned obviously. The temperatures in a bush fire will certainly cause thin steel to warp and buckle, but I'm pretty it would not be possible to get hot enough to melt steel.

Incidentally if the fire was moving slower, it also wouldn't have been as hot. The heat produced is directly proportional to amount of fuel it's burning. If the fire is burning extremely hot, then it will also exhaust its fuel supply much faster.

Bham Chatterjee
on February 11, 2009 2:09 AM

To all those who will now spend millions of hours reseaching new bushfire survival policies should know that local councils in the future must decline any house construction within the bush. It is exciting to live in a forest but Australian experience has proved beyond doubt that in a safety conscious country such dreams about bush living may end up in destroying human lives instead. Therefore ban housing construction inside the bush. This is plain and simple commonsense.

anonymous
on February 11, 2009 4:04 AM

To Bham - wasn't necessarily the bush that resulted in the loss of now 181 lives, but the rough terrain and lack of communciations, alot of people simply didn't know it was coming. Nothing you can do about that.

nick
on February 11, 2009 11:57 AM

I read in the Australian that the Chief Fire Officer and Bush Fire preparedness advisors, for Maryville had warned against the "green lobby" desire to severely restrict the removal of trees from properties and to leave the 'debris on the forest floor for wildlife'.
Unfortunately the "green lobby" recommendations were carried at a council vote in 2003 and the consequences are all too clear.
Whilst the conditions are exceptional, the speed and spread of fire was exacerbated by the density and proximity of the trees to home and the level of debris on woodland and forest floor.

Rob
on February 12, 2009 1:52 PM

To Bham Chatterjee. Banning people from living in the bush is impossible.....someone has to live at the edge of the city and where would farmers live?

By John Davidson
on February 13, 2009 1:23 AM

All the people who died in their houses would have lived if their house had had an effective fire shelter. All those that died fleeing their homes (because their homes didn't have fire shelters) would have lived.

Put it another way, almost all of those who died would have been saved by effective houshold fire shelters. the tragedy is that fire shelters were part of the recomendations arising after the "Black Friday" fires 70 years ago.

The problem in Australia is not a lack of investigations or high quality research. The problem is a chronic failure to act once all the fuss about the latest tragedy dies off.

Derek Louey
on February 17, 2009 9:09 AM

Rachel Nowak may be an expert on Reproductive Biology but I think she needs to do a little reading on thermodynamics and empirical bushfire research. There are only two mechanisms that have been consistently shown to why houses are destroyed in a bushfire. The most frequent is ember attack. It just takes one spark to enter the house and burn it down. An airtight house design, a strategic fire-plan to defend the house before the fire front arrives and a sprinker system will give someone an extremely high chance of protecting the building. The intact building can then provide a radiant shelter as the fire front passes from which the occupants can emerge 15 min later.

However, the house is undefendable if is presented with an excessive radiant heat load (windows shatter, fire enters and furnishings quickly combusts, houses 'explode'). But even with very high flames the radiant heat load rapidly dissipates with distance from the source. For the physics minded the intensity is reduced by the distance squared.

For instance if the flame height is 10m high, a firefighter needs to stand four times that distance (40m) from the firefont to remain unharmed by the heat. A house only needs to be about two and half times the flame height away for it to remain intact (and will quite adequately shield the occupants from the deadly heat)

So even when the flames are crowning at 40 metres, the building will remain intact with a 100 m radius clearing around it. This figure can be adjusted based on the height of the forest surrounding your property.

Vast tracts of bush do not need to be cleared to make a building defendable, only the destructive fuel load in the immediate proximity of the building.

It's nice to have new theories and solutions about what caused this tragedy but a careful reading of existing research shows that this is unnecessary.

The United Firefighters Union national secretary Peter Marshall last week was quoted to say:

"The recommendations from the (Victorian) royal commission will be no different to those that arose from the inquiries into Ash Wednesday, the Dandenong fires and the Canberra fires, that haven't been implemented," "Multi-millions of dollars have been spent on bushfire research and what's it done?"

Source: http://www.firelab.org/media/ffszhowbig.pdf

rob barber
on February 25, 2009 9:53 AM

The intensity of the fires on Saturday made defense risky even for well prepared homes. I have met a number of people who saved their homes that day with a fire pump and hoses. I also met some who saved their homes using just buckets and mops. But I have also been to burnt out houses where people tried to defend but appear to have been overwhelmed. The fire behaviour was variable of course due to different topographies, local fuel conditions and varying wind conditions. These can perhaps account for success in defence in one area and failure in another. But even very local differences such as garden planting made a significant contribution. There were many cases of one home surviving and all around destroyed where I was sent.
One survivor told me that he saw a number of homes around his burned from the sub floor up. Embers had blown under the floors and built up against flammable materials. In these cases the floors were low to the ground and putting them out with a hose was too difficult, [he had tried to save his neighbours' homes as well as his own].
Normal roof construction can be made ember proof by the way. Continuous heavy duty foil under tiles beneath metal battens, and fire resistant batt material placed under cappings and infilling of all gaps around the perimeter of iron roofs is routinely used in bushfire areas.

By Hollywood
on February 27, 2009 7:55 PM

Yes, garden plantings can be crucial to helping your home survive a bushfire. I've built a web site around landscaping with fire resistant natives for people living here in the San Francisco Bay area where we have the biggest bluegum eucalyptus in the world. In fact, burning eucalyptus was reportedly 80% of the fuel that burned in the deadly Oakland-Berkeley Fire of 1991.
Anyway, please surf through my web site, read the Santa Cruz County version of the script, watch the video clips and leave your comments and criticisms in the GuestBook.

Hollywood

By ilmar karuso
on March 22, 2009 10:45 PM

The problem is the design of the houses in Australia.
Look around you.
THese are the same dire designs that where built after the war. The fibro has gone but the designs are the same. No one questions these horrid things.

I am an architect who is working on new housing design in Europe, and have investigated the problems related to fireproofing.
My new experimental designs, have eliminated all fire entry points, but still have a modern lasting beauty.
My houses have no gutters as we know them, no eaves, no outdoor decks, no windows, and a special roof design which fights fires from inside not outside.
Fire needs three things to exist. Heat, fuel, and oxygen. If you take one away, the fire is gone. There are no really new forms of architecture, but there are new ideas, and new solutions to the old problems, e.g. how to catch water without a gutter?
How to live indoors and out of doors without a deck.
I'm in the final stage of developement, and would welcome interaction from anyone interested.
IK

Eddy
on April 13, 2009 10:25 PM

From what i have read under extreme fire even a house can reach ignition temperature and just explode as the fire approaches so i believe a separate fire shelter is the way to go.
Authorities do not like bunkers because they have no control over the design or maintenance of them so i asked Bunnings if they would sell an approved 2mx2m insulated garden shed/fire shelter with stainless steel heat shields so in an emergency the mower could be tossed out and 6 people could shelter in safety.
They said they may be interested but did not know of any available so if anyone out there does please give them a ring.

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